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It’s probably fair to say that the information, communications and technology (ICT) industry is littered with the corpses of failed joint ventures, business partnerships and strategic collaborations that never quite achieved the ambitions of the parties involved. It’s an important remind...

In a recent Heavy Reading blog (reprinted below) on Three UK’s new approach to assurance for their fully integrated cloud native core network – a world first – it is clear that leading CSPs are integrating evolved and state-of-the-art assurance capabilities from the very beginning ...

Secondary or sub-brands are certainly nothing new in the mobile communications industry. Indeed, many mobile operators have used one or several sub-brands to target different sections of the market, with varying degrees of success.
In recent years, sub-brands have become an important tool f...

From reading the latest headlines in the media, you would think that the only things telcos care about right now are 5G, NFV/SDN and IoT devices. While this may be valid for the upper echelons of mobile and fixed network operators, it is not the case for many telcos. Indeed, a large number of them a...

QoS Challenges in the NFV/5G networks
NFV-core based 5G networks have already caught the fancy of the Telco Cloud service provider. The reasons for this are its promise of high QoS.
High speed/throughput, high reliability, low latency, high capacity, high availability, high connectivity and dynam...

The ability to make and receive calls is the lifeblood of any customer-facing enterprise, while conventional fixed telephony systems are becoming something of an anachronism as people now favour mobile devices. The question that most SMEs should now be asking their IT departments is: do we still nee...

Digitization of businesses and virtualization of networks promise business benefits but are also introducing new challenges for the communications service providers.
Ongoing exponential increase in data consumption by subscribers, especially of video applications and OTT, has taken a toll on the ...

As the SDN and NFV train steams further on its journey towards network revolution, has the industry stopped to consider the wider impact? Is the infrastructure in place to serve the demands of the new system?
Trials continue with a bout of enthusiasm for the potential of SDN and NFV, which ...

Coming out and ranting against federated inventory has been interesting given the amount of anonymous feedback I have received. Anyone wanting to talk about it, let’s connect at TMF next week!
First, any reasonable order management or workflow product out there regardless of federated data ...

Communications service providers (CSPs) have, over many years, become besotted by different forms of assurance. I’m not talking about insurance here; it’s more about making sure things work properly they way they were designed to and the way customers expect them to work.
Depending on...

Supply and demand is the most important relationship between operators and users. It is also a relationship that is now undergoing a profound change because of one single development: the fact that today’s users are always connected to a smartphone or tablet.
As well as being “always ...

Teenage Kicks for the Internet Generation

I’m not that ancient (pre-middle aged I’d like to think) but like many in this industry my teenage years were very different to those of my kids. Their choices are Apple vs. Google or PS4 vs. Xbox One. Mine/ours were… well, they weren’t like that. And for communication service providers (CSPs), the implications are significant – the expectations and demands of teenagers today (more on that later) is going to push hard at the bounds of commercial reality/viability.

Before we go further, I should point out that this blog is not attempting to provide a deep analysis of the CSP business model against that of the OTT players. Neither will it suggest a technology-based solution – tech won’t resolve ‘market conditions’. It’s just a reality check.

The chasm between teenage expectations – the ‘teenage kicks’ of the title – and the world of telecoms/OSS/BSS that we work in is significant. While we in the industry talk about monetising services, next generation billing, and policy controls, a generation of teenagers are out there in the ‘real world’ consuming unlimited data plans, logging onto open Wi-Fi hotspots, downloading free apps, and streaming free music.

In most households – probably regardless of income – I believe there exists the notion of a ‘reasonable spend limit’ (almost certainly the same principle applies in business). This is the idea that when a consumer, family or group calculates its monthly spend for communications services, including landline, broadband, TV and mobile, there is a nominal sum beyond which is deemed unacceptable –a self-imposed spending cap. Some years back when I worked for a mobile provider, I estimated this sum as being in the £50-60 per month range for a high-end prosumer or business user. Perhaps today, with all of the above services considered, for an Internet Family (my capitals) it is more likely to be £100-120 per month.

With that in mind, consider my own recent experience – the call I’d been putting off to our mobile service provider, to upgrade the contracts for my wife and daughter. I won’t name the provider and I won’t go into the nitty gritty, other than to say that the customer experience was poor and the two years’ of dutiful contract servitude appeared to have no appreciable value. The upshot of this being that, after many hours of weighing up phones and price plans on their website, we were off looking for an alternative provider. Groan.

While my wife’s communications needs are straightforward – voice and text messaging – my teenage daughter comes from a very different generation. And here we are at the crux of the matter. In the long discussions with my daughter about her price plan and device requirements, the following ‘wish list’ was generated…

Price plan

Unlimited texts

Unlimited data

200-500 mins

Music downloads / free FM radio

£20-25 /month

Device

Predictably, an iPhone 5 (but not a 5c) or…

Surprisingly, a BlackBerry 9720 – with an iPad for ‘heavy lifting’ on home Wi-Fi, it seems that BlackBerry devices are still a viable option for teenagers while ‘roaming’ (i.e. in the ‘badlands’ where Wi-Fi coverage is thin on the ground). They’re available at a lower price point, come with free BBM, offer a decent battery life and a QWERTY keyboard for texting – features that once made the BlackBerry brand ubiquitous in the business market – and possibly could again in the right packaging.

Here’s the surprising bit. My initial reaction was that such a package (especially with an iPhone) would be commercially unattractive for any CSP to offer. Count me as surprised when I learned that they are out there, quite a few in fact. Yes, many come with an upfront payment for the device and some include high overage charges on voice to increase monthly spend but they are out there. As such it would seem that the Internet model – where ‘stuff’ is available on-demand and available for free, freemium or flat rate subscription (i.e. paid for or subsidised through advertising revenues) – is becoming ever more entrenched in the real world.

When rock ‘n’ roll was in its infancy (yes, before my time), it was generally thought that those interested in rock music at a young age would somehow grow out of it, presumably gaining an overnight interest in classical music. The truth, as we know today, is that once a fan of the Rolling Stones, The Undertones or [insert name of dusty old favourite band/artist], pretty much always a fan. So the on-demand, all-you-can-eat Internet Generation (my capitals) growing up today will be the same people paying/budgeting for their families’ IT, telecoms and media service is in the future.

It would seem that commoditisation of mobile (along with other IT/telecoms) services is well established and the genie once out of the bottle is hard to pop back in.